The north church mourns the loss of former bishop Ulrich Wilckens. The former bishop of the former Holstein-Lübeck district of the North Elbe Church died on Monday at the age of 93 in Bad Oldesloe, the North Church announced on Wednesday. Regional Bishop Kristina Kühnbaum-Schmidt praised Wilckens as a bishop to whom ecumenical understanding was a matter close to his heart and who was clear and controversial in advocating his theological positions.
Hamburg / Schwerin - Wilckens, born in Hamburg in 1928, was, among other things, a university professor and from 1981 to 1991 bishop of the then Holstein-Lübeck district of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, which merged in 2012 with the Evangelical regional churches of Mecklenburg and Pomerania to form the North Church.
Only last year Wilckens admitted in his autobiography that in 1944, when he was 15, he volunteered for the Waffen SS.
dpa
